200 gig confusion

  • Thread starter Thread starter Josh
  • Start date Start date
J

Josh

Let me first start out by saying that I am new to the hardware setup
side of computers, and have little knowledge of the ins and outs. I am
at a total loss of whats going on with my setup. I have had my Asus
A7V8X for almost a year and a half now with little to no problems. I
recently purchased a new HDD (Western Digital 200gb ATA/100
7200rpm)and am having a real time trying to get it to "recognize" the
whole 200 gig drive(not 127 like it says).I have looked around and
found many highly detailed workarounds, but again, I am not a computer
wizz from a hardware standpoint. I read an article about flashing a
new bios, but again I'm in the dark here, and am still unsure if that
will help because I also found something about 48bit LBA support, and
I'm not sure if this board has that.You see the reason I am setting up
a new HD is because my wife's PC crapped out and I figured I would
upgrade my 80gig hd in my main PC, and then after I move all my
important stuff to the new 200 gig HD I would put the old 80 in my
wife's PC. If it is important I am running an AMD 2400xp on Windows XP
Pro with SP1. Hopefully there is a relatively easy workaround?
Thanks
Josh
 
You need bios 1001 or higher.

It should tell you the bios date on the first black screen you see on power
up or just go into the bios itself.

So if yours is below then go to asus site and find the latest bios and read
the instructions carefully on how to flash it. Its pretty straight forward
and easy to do its just that everyone will frighten the shit out of you by
saying it could destroy your board. It can indeed but you would have to be
awfully unlucky!

You can read this info for yourself here:-

http://www.asus.it/support/english/techref/48bithdd/index.aspx
 
Let me first start out by saying that I am new to the hardware setup
side of computers, and have little knowledge of the ins and outs. I am
at a total loss of whats going on with my setup. I have had my Asus
A7V8X for almost a year and a half now with little to no problems. I
recently purchased a new HDD (Western Digital 200gb ATA/100
7200rpm)and am having a real time trying to get it to "recognize" the
whole 200 gig drive(not 127 like it says).I have looked around and
found many highly detailed workarounds, but again, I am not a computer
wizz from a hardware standpoint. I read an article about flashing a
new bios, but again I'm in the dark here, and am still unsure if that
will help because I also found something about 48bit LBA support, and
I'm not sure if this board has that.You see the reason I am setting up
a new HD is because my wife's PC crapped out and I figured I would
upgrade my 80gig hd in my main PC, and then after I move all my
important stuff to the new 200 gig HD I would put the old 80 in my
wife's PC. If it is important I am running an AMD 2400xp on Windows XP
Pro with SP1. Hopefully there is a relatively easy workaround?
Thanks
Josh
Click to expand...

According to this, A7V8X had 48 bit support from day one.
This page suggests you shouldn't need to flash the BIOS to
get a Southbridge connected drive to work.

http://www.asus.it/support/english/techref/48bithdd/index.aspx

The MS KB article for WinXP is here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q303013

The article says to use the registry setting EnableBigLBA, if
you only have WinXP original installed. You would need to resize
the partition after adding the registry setting, and that would
require something like Partition Magic (and a recent enough
version). If you install using a slipstreamed WinXP SP1 disk, the
implication is that you can define a full sized partition during
the install.

Since I cannot say I see a rhyme nor reason to the successes
and failures to install, I'll leave it at that.

Always test an oversized disk, by filling it with files, after
you finish prepping it. If the disk is not set up properly,
the first file after the 137GB physical address is reached, will
cause immediate file system corruption. This is because the
sector address used by the hardware will go back to zero, when
you hit the 137GB mark, and stuff at sector zero will get
overwritten. Better to test the disk now, than find out months
from now, when the disk has 136.9GB of useful info, and your
latest added file causes the whole disk to be lost.

Good luck,
Paul
 
The problem is that your drive crosses the 137 gig barrier, which
requires 48 bit lba support.

This, in turn, requires several things:

-support in the drive (you do have that)
-support in the BIOS and motherboard controller
[check the Asus web site for the A7V8X]
-Support in the OS [XP with service pack 1 has that]
-A SPECIAL REGISTRY ENTRY
[this is probably your problem]

Even with XP SP1, which has the code, it's not enabled by default. A
special registry entry is required, it can either be installed with an
".REG" file or put in manually.

You can get more info on this at the MS web site.

But the entry is made like this:

To enable 48-bit LBA large-disk support in the registry:
1. Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
2. Locate and click the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters\
3. On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following
registry value:
Value name: EnableBigLba
Data type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 0x1
4. Quit Registry Editor.

Good luck.
 
I do NOT believe that your particular older motherboard model will recognize
any size of harddrive over 137 GB. Even with a new BIOS. You might want to
return the 200 GB harddrive and get a 120 GB drive, which will work.
 
The limitation of the 127gb format is the limitation to the NTFS partion in
XP not so much the bios, after you format the drive install Win XP, load SP1
or 2 then aquire a copy of Partiion Magic and expand the partion to the full
size.
Then your done! it's that simple.
 
Primevil, you nailed it! I looked arond and found a exe file called
"reallybigharddrive.exe" and installed it. I'm guessing it fixed my
registry to allow for the 48 bit lba, everyone mentioned. I then used
the Partition Magic software to format the rest of the drive. Worked
like a charm, and I added some files to the drive to make sure it was
configured properly, and no crashing, so I guess I'm in the clear. One
last thing though, the main drive is recognized as 127 gig and the
secondary partition is rcognized at 57 gig, so what happened to the
other 16 gigs? Not a big deal, just curious. Thanks everyone for the
help!!
 
That's the difference between decimal and binary counting.... 200GB(dec) =
~ 186GB(bin)


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